Cisco to establish another manufacturing unit in India

Technology giant Cisco has started working on establishing a manufacturing plant in India. Sources say that talks regarding this are also on with the government.

CEO Chuck Robbins regarded India as one of their “best bases” at their Las Vegas Live 2016 conference and said that they are actively working on establishing a broader base ranging digitising systems to smart cities in the state.

As far as the expansion plans are concerned, he said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been keen on allowing foreign companies to set up manufacturing units in India.

He also said that the company had presented the plan to him and things are going great in the initial stages of the project. He added that they have already started moving forward with their healthcare and securities initiatives in the up and coming digital cities in the country.

Cisco is not only heavily involved in over fifteen smart cities project in India, but it is also working with the government of Andhra Pradesh to start Bharat Net, a wireless broadband service providing project.

These plans of the company go hand in hand with the PM’s two most important projects: Make in India and Digital India, along with the obvious Smart Cities initiative. It has been a clear motive of the Modi government right from the campaign days to urge foreign investment in the country.

Previously most of the foreign investments in India were on back-end offices and BPOs. However this active persuasion by the govt. seems to be changing things. This has been the biggest development on this front since Amazon’s announcement of $3 billion investment in India, during the PM’s visit to the US.

Cisco has its largest site in the country, with 11,000 employees, and it also offers education to 24,000 students spread over 47 schools.